Open Farm Sunday gives visitors the chance to understand how food is produced and how farmers manage the countryside.
LEAF’s annual Open Farm Sunday event took place on 12th June and the Food & Farming Discovery Trust were at Gressenhall Farm & Workhouse for the occasion!
Over 250 farms across the UK opened their gates this year, to showcase British Farming at its best to thousands of visitors. Open Farm Sunday offers a unique opportunity for visitors to see farming first hand and learn more about how their food is produced and how farmers work as custodians of the countryside.
At Gressenhall there was so much to do and see including rare pigs, goats and of course the pair of Suffolk Punch Horses. The newly created Community Tree Nursery was also open for visitors, where they could take their own sapling home to plant.
We were present in the Food & Farming Discovery Trust mobile classroom with a host of activities to take part in, allowing visitors to learn more about trees and biodiversity and how they are important to farming. Farmland makes up 72% of land in the UK, but just 3% of that is managed using agroforestry. Agroforestry is a land management approach which combines trees and shrubs with crop and livestock farming systems. By integrating trees and shrubs into farming systems, they can provide many benefits, including increasing wildlife, improving soil health and helping to manage water flow.
We began by using leaves and seeds to do some tree identification and learn about just how many different types of tree you can find here in the UK and discussed why trees are important. Some of our younger visitors then did some leaf rubbings to see more clearly the many different leaf shapes you can find in your local area.
There was then the chance to take a closer look at these leaves and seeds under the microscope. Visitors were encouraged to guess whether they thought leaves from different deciduous trees would look different under the microscope and were shocked to see they largely look the same! This gave the opportunity to discuss the biology of leaves. Finally, we had our fill in the blanks quiz, with lots of our older visitors getting very competitive trying to fill in the blanks on some facts.
A huge thank you to Gressenhall Farm and Workhouse for hosting us and for our volunteers that helped with the running of the event. LEAF Open farm Sunday will return on Sunday 11th June 2023!
